Category: Professional standards

BP, safety culture and integrity management

Tom von Aschwege has provided SafetyAtWorkBlog with a long article that was intended as a comment on recent articles concerning the safety culture of BP.  The comment deserved to be an article in order to provide more prominence to von Aschwege’s views.  Links, where appropriate, have been added and format has been tweaked.

“I came by Ross Macfarlane’s article totally by accident. I regret to say that I completely agree with him, because I have made some of the same, or very similar observations. I too am an ex-BP employee, and I too have a strong sense of dismay at what is occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Prior to retiring from BP in 2009, I worked in Integrity Management roles for 6 years in the BP deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GoM) organization.  In those 6 years we put massive amounts of time and effort into improving Integrity Management (IM) processes and practices for GoM operations – even more so after the 2005 Texas City accident, Thunder Horse listing incident, and Alaska pipeline failure.   I am thoroughly convinced that BP has done more and accomplished more in this area overall than any other GoM operator.   Yet somehow these things still happen in BP operations, and I wonder how that can be.   How can BP be so unlucky, and other GoM operators, with far fewer technical resources and knowledge, not have this happen to them? Continue reading “BP, safety culture and integrity management”

Small OHS issues may be controlled by big picture action

The continuing risks of asbestos are not nearly as noticeable on the radar of OHS professionals in the Western (or Minority) world as it used to be.  In many people’s minds, a ban on asbestos has removed the risk.  That is not the case, even if much of our attention is given to cleaning up the chemical’s dangerous legacy.

Asbestos is as big an issue in the majority world as it ever was in the West and, for those few who want to look at the global impact of asbestos, the risks are not hard to find.

Every so often, the reality of asbestos pricks the minds of the complacent West and a recent safety alert issued by one of Australia’s smallest OHS regulators is an example.  Northern Territory’s WorkSafe has echoed actions by WorkSafe WA and issued a safety alert on

“plant … recently imported into Western Australia and found to contain bonded asbestos gaskets.  The plant was imported from New Zealand and Thailand for installation at a major industrial site in that state.  Workers at the site were unaware that any gaskets contained asbestos.”

Risks associated with imported machinery and plant will increase for Australia as its own manufacturing capacity declines.  This economic reality and inevitability sets some challenges for OHS professionals who operate, principally, in only one jurisdiction. Continue reading “Small OHS issues may be controlled by big picture action”

Phenomenology and the safety professional

In Australia, safety management is being progressed most obviously through sociology and the work of  Andrew Hopkins.  But perhaps it is possible to cut through some of the commercial  “safety culture” twaddle by looking at the work of philosophers and the concept of phenomenology.  As any modern student seems to do instead of reading the original, look to the movie.

On 20 April 2010, Australian lawyer, Andrew Douglas, channeled The Matrix in trying to challenge the thinking of the audience of OHS professionals at the Safety In Action conference.

In his conference paper, Douglas compared the positive and negative safety cultures to the blue and red pill choice that Morpheus offers Neo.   Continue reading “Phenomenology and the safety professional”

Lord Young smashes bridges instead of building them at IOSH conference

Following the post on the 2010 British election campaign a reader pointed out that David Cameron’s reviewer of OHS, Lord Young, spoke at the 2010 conference of the Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH) in late March 2010 and ruffled some feathers.

Lord David Young described the public perception of OHS as

“at best, as an object of ridicule and, at worst, a bureaucratic nightmare”.

However according to IOSH, Lord Young identified OHS professionals as the problem instead of considering the truth of many of the media reports.   Continue reading “Lord Young smashes bridges instead of building them at IOSH conference”

Can OHS achieve “practical wisdom”?

Continuing SafetyAtWorkBlog’s belief that the best advice on workplace safety often comes from people outside the OHS discipline, Professor Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College was interviewed in the Australian Financial Review on 30 March 2010 (only available by subscription).  Schwartz was talking about the social and regulatory impact of the global financial crisis but his take on the obeying of, and dominance of, rules seems equally applicable in OHS.

“Schwartz says the common response to crises…..is to reach for more regulation.  But the problem is that these people who run these banks are smarter than any set of rules we can come up with.  So what will happen is that [the rule] will work for a while, and then people will find a way to subvert them.”

He goes on:

“I think a lot of the trouble that we have is that you’ve got these people who run institutions, the CEOs, make speeches about how ethical they are and they may even mean it, but the people who are actually making the day-to-day decisions know that unless they make their targets, they are going to lose their jobs. Continue reading “Can OHS achieve “practical wisdom”?”

Workplace bullying needs harmony and good managers

The Australian Financial Review on 24 March 2010 includes an article (only available through subscription or hard copy purchase) that states that the “tangle of state laws hampers compliance” by business on the issue of workplace bullying.  Harvard Business Review reports on how to cut through the distractions and attend to a root cause of workplace bullying. Continue reading “Workplace bullying needs harmony and good managers”

The OHS profession in Australia needs a saviour. Has anyone got one spare?

In December 2009, SafetyAtWorkBlog reported the comments by the English Conservative leader, David Cameron, on some concerns he had about the direction of occupational health and safety in England and how the newspapers were reporting OHS.

On 15 March 2010, The Independent published an article by the CEO of the Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH), Rob Strange.  [IOSH says it is a personal opinion piece]  Strange’s article is not a rebuttal of Cameron’s speech but is an important statement in the dialogue, or debate, that must occur if workplace safety is ever going to be treated with respect.

Strange must deal with the notorious English tabloid press and some of his article shows that no matter what relationship one may wish to have with a journalist, there is no guarantee that the journalist or editor will run your perspective, argument or rebuttal.  His struggle shows how important it is to establish a respectful relationship with the media producers.  His example should be followed by safety professional associations elsewhere. Continue reading “The OHS profession in Australia needs a saviour. Has anyone got one spare?”

© Workplace Safety Services P/L (ABN: 68091088621) and SafetyAtWorkBlog, 2008-2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kevin Jones and SafetyAtWorkBlog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Concatenate Web Development
© Designed and developed by Concatenate Aust Pty Ltd